Venus and Musician
Later versions tend to be mostly or entirely by his workshop, with the degree of Titian's personal contribution uncertain and the subject of differing views.
[3] The five versions generally regarded as at least largely by Titian are, with an organist, the two in Madrid and one in Berlin, and with a lutenist those in Cambridge and New York.
[4] Another version in the Uffizi in Florence is less highly regarded, and has no musician, but a Cupid, as well as a black and white dog at the foot of the bed, eyeing a partridge on the parapet.
[5] In all the versions Venus' bed appears to be set in a loggia or against a large open window with a low stone wall or parapet.
In all an unembarrassed Venus is completely naked, except for a gauzy cloth over her crotch in some versions, but wears several pieces of very expensive jewellery,[9] typical aspects of courtesan pictures.
[10] The musician is smartly dressed, and carries a blade weapon, in several versions a large sword with gilded fittings.
Other reclining nudes are the Pardo Venus (or Jupiter and Antiope, now in the Louvre), "that laboured attempt to recapture his early style",[11] from the mid-1540s.
The almost brutal directness with which their bodies are presented to us makes them, now that their delicate texture has been removed by restoration, singularly un-aphrodisiac.
"[14] The erotic appeal of the subject is evident, but some critics have argued for a more allegorical meaning to do with the appreciation of beauty through both the eyes and ears, and the superiority of the former.
It is difficult to play the organ and to admire a beautiful woman at the same time; but it is easy to serenade her, as it were, to the accompaniment of a lute, while giving full attention to her charms.
"[18] The 20th-century fashion for explaining paintings with reference to the subtle doctrines of Renaissance Neoplatonism reached the series, although in the case of Titian there is even more resistance than usual to such explanations.
Edgar Wind noted a pictorial convention, seen also in the Pastoral Concert and other works, where divine figures are nude, but mortals clothed.
Ulrich Middeldorf, in 1947, began the reaction: "The main figures in Titian's Sacred and Profane Love (Galleria Borghese, Rome) possess a dignity and purity that make any high-flung interpretation of the picture seem acceptable.
Originally the work was more daring; Venus lay uninhibitedly with her gaze fixed on the musician, which none of the versions discussed here have.
Probably the client or the artist thought that the arrangement was too provocative, so Venus' head was turned, and a lap dog added to give her something to look at, and also touch, so reinforcing any allegory of the senses that might be intended.
Miguel Falomir says that recent x-ray and infra-red reflectography make it clear that this was traced from the other Prado version (though they were not re-united again in the Spanish royal collection for over a century).
It was thought that it was one of Granvelle's painting bought (through imperial arm-twisting) by Rudolf II, Holy Roman Emperor from Ganvelle's heirs in 1600, and was later given to Philip III of Spain.
[32] Hugh Trevor-Roper thought that the organist "has the features of Philip [II]",[33] but this seems to be a minority view among recent sources; the Berlin version has also been thought to show him;[34] Penny draws attention to the variable quality of the Berlin version, and calls the painting of the head "superb", where the drapery is "dull", the organ "routine", but the dog "an inspiration".
[36] The Metropolitan Museum of Art dates its version, which it calls Venus and the Lute Player, to c. 1565–70 (65 x 82 1/2 inches/165.1 x 209.6 cm), and attributes it to Titian and his workshop.
